Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

14The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution

P.Terrence Hopmann

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) provides an excellent case to evaluate the development of regional international regimes in the realm of security. This organization is currently composed of 55 member states1 in Europe, broadly defined as extending from “Vancouver to Vladivostok the long way around,” including the United States and Canada and all former Eurasian states that emerged from the breakup of the Soviet Union. It is the successor to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), which produced the “Helsinki Accords” of 1975, often cited as marking the high-water point of the East-West détente that developed in the early 1970s. Since the end of the Cold War, it has evolved and adapted to the post-Cold War environment and has begun to play a primary role in the prevention and resolution of the many conflicts that have appeared in the Eurasian region since 1989.

My main argument here is that the OSCE has developed into a “security regime” for the Eurasian region. Its performance may thus serve to illustrate the power of liberal institutionalist ideas about international relations. Using the OSCE as a case study of a regional security regime, I thus propose to examine the proposition that regional security organizations can restrain anarchy in international political relations and promote cooperation to solve common problems and resolve violent or potentially violent conflicts. I will investigate the impact that multilateral organizations can have in managing conflicts and building security at the regional level.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

ized by conflicts of interest in which changes in the relative power positions of states within an anarchic international system make war and violence almost inevitable, especially during times when system structures become destabilized and power balances break down. Realist predictions about the end of the Cold War generally maintained that the collapse of a relatively stable balance of power founded on nuclear deterrence between the United States and the Soviet Union would inevitably lead to greater violence and war in contrast to the previous four decades of the “long peace.”2 Many realists feel vindicated in the validity of their theory and its resultant predictions by the many conflicts that have appeared throughout the region formerly occupied by the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia since 1989.

In contrast to the realists, most liberal institutionalists have argued that it is possible to construct cooperative arrangements among sovereign and independent states within an anarchic international “society”3 on the basis of international “regimes.” Regimes have been defined by Stephen Krasner as “sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations.”4 Most early treatments of regimes within the liberal tradition focused on their operation outside the realm of security, especially on issues such as the economy or the environment, and most analyses of security issues were largely conceded to the domain of the realists. A notable exception is found in the work of Robert Jervis, who has argued that it is possible to have regimes in the domain of security as well, defined as “those principles, rules, and norms that permit nations to be restrained in their behavior in the belief that others will reciprocate.”5 Jervis goes on to note that a security regime must facilitate cooperation that goes beyond following the dictates of short-run self-interests in order to qualify. At the same time, regimes are usually accepted by sovereign states because their leaders perceive that their long-term gains from fulfilling the expectations of a regime will exceed the losses they expect to suffer through forgoing temptations to follow short-term narrow self-interest. The theory of security regimes thus falls at the intersection of realist and liberal conceptions of international relations. This argument is stated succinctly by Keohane and Nye:

International institutions do not call into question the core of the realist model of anarchy, since they do not have the power to enforce their rules on strong states. But they may challenge some of the implications of anarchy for state behavior, making less likely the competitive, worst-case behavior that realists predict. To the extent that international institutions provide information and coordinate actors’ expectations, the security dilemma that states face may be less stark, and doctrinaire realist

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

predictions of state behavior may be off the mark. International cooperation will be affected by the richness and appropriateness of available international institutions.6

My principal contention in this chapter is that the OSCE came a long way during the 1990s toward forming the core of just such a security regime. It created many of the conditions necessary for regional cooperation to maintain European security since the end of the Cold War. It has articulated shared values to which all of its members have formally subscribed. It has constructed an institutional framework within which all member states may attend to the security needs of one another, exchange information, and facilitate the peaceful resolution of differences. It has also emphasized the development of common political, economic, and social principles based on the ideas of liberal democracy and market economies in an effort to create a “zone of peace.”7 Finally, the OSCE has created a set of structures intended to prevent conflicts, to mediate ceasefires in times of violent conflict, to manage and resolve those underlying issues that have produced violence, and to assist states and regions that have experienced violence to rebuild their security in order to rehabilitate their political, social, and economic structures.

The many roles that the OSCE has attempted to fulfill may be evaluated in terms of a model of conflict escalation and abatement, along the lines suggested by Michael Lund.8 Although not all of these functions have been undertaken by the OSCE in the first decade since the end of the Cold War, most of them have been attempted by at least one of the OSCE missions or organs involved in conflict prevention. To the extent that the OSCE can successfully fulfill one or several of the functions identified in Table 14.1, it can make a significant contribution to reducing security dilemmas and promoting greater collective cooperation in meeting some of the many challenges to post-Cold War Eurasian security. Since the OSCE has undertaken virtually all of these tasks only in the period since 1992, it is important to keep in mind that this is an ongoing process and that some patience may be necessary before concrete results are forthcoming.

In this paper I propose to assess the overall contributions of the OSCE at this early stage in its history to limiting the escalation of conflicts and promoting the abatement and resolution of conflicts in the aftermath of violence. I will do this largely by comparing a few cases in which the OSCE undertook a significant role in regions of conflict during the last decade of the twentieth century. I shall assess the contributions made by the OSCE to promote more cooperative and less violent outcomes in several of these situations, and I will evaluate reasons for the failure of the OSCE to meet expectations in preventing violence or resolving underlying conflicts in other cases. Before doing this, however, a brief examina-

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

TABLE 14.1 Diplomatic Roles at Different Stages of Conflict—Potential OSCE Activities in the Management of Conflict

Stages of Conflict

Ladder of Escalation

Ladder of Abatement

Violent conflict

Humanitarian aid; protection of noncombatants

Cease-fire negotiation

Crisis (turning points)

Crisis management

Peacekeeping, prevention of conflict reignition

Precarious peace

Conflict prevention

Conflict resolution

Conditional peace

Monitoring, early warning, democratization

Postconflict security building

Stable peace

Peacetime diplomacy

Peacetime diplomacy

tion of the development and institutionalization of the OSCE since its inception will help establish the context for the subsequent analysis of the OSCE’s performance in conflict management.

DEVELOPMENT AND INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE CSCE/OSCE

The stimulus behind the creation of the CSCE was a Soviet/Warsaw Pact proposal for an all-European conference intended largely to resolve unsettled issues held over from the end of World War II. Their primary objective was to ratify the postwar status quo in Europe, especially the division of Germany. The CSCE negotiations opened with a foreign ministers’ meeting in Helsinki on July 3–7, 1973, comprising 35 delegations, including two North American countries—the United States and Canada —plus all states of Europe big and small, from the Soviet Union to the Holy See, with the sole exception of Albania.9

The working phase of negotiations took place in Geneva from September 18, 1973, until July 25, 1975. During this phase, issues were grouped together in three major substantive “baskets.” Basket I focused primarily on a set of principles to govern relations among states in the realm of security and on specific “confidence-building measures.” The latter are military provisions intended to create transparency and reduce tensions by requiring countries to provide assurances to potential adversaries that their military preparations are essentially defensive and nonthreatening. Basket II emphasized cooperation in the fields of economics, science and technology, and the environment. Basket III issues concerned cooperation in humanitarian areas, including human contacts, travel and tourism, informa-

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

tion and cultural exchanges, and educational exchanges. It was this basket that covered many of the human rights issues, especially the freer movement of peoples, ideas, and information across national boundaries.

The concluding stage of the original CSCE was a summit conference at which heads of state of all 35 CSCE countries signed the Final Act in Helsinki on July 31-August 1, 1975. The Helsinki Final Act, first and foremost, contains the “Decalogue,” 10 principles that should govern interstate relations: (1) sovereign equality of states, (2) refraining from the threat or use of force, (3) inviolability of frontiers, (4) territorial integrity of states, (5) peaceful settlement of disputes, (6) nonintervention in internal affairs, (7) respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, (8) self-determination of peoples, (9) cooperation among states, and (10) fulfillment of obligations under international law. The elaboration of these 10 principles, and others subsequently derived from them, has created the normative core for a European security regime. However, the implementation of several potentially contradictory principles has given rise to considerable difficulty.

First, the issue of the relative priority of the sixth and seventh principles became a subject of dispute. The effort to enhance individual human rights and the rights of minority groups has necessarily brought the organization to intervene into what many states consider to be their internal affairs, and during the Cold War period the communist states especially insisted that principle six took precedence over all others. With the disappearance of the East-West conflict, however, a broad consensus has developed within the OSCE that, when states have freely accepted certain principles, including those in the decalogue, this gives other member states limited rights of intervention in order to uphold the agreed norms. Therefore, on matters ranging from intrusive inspection to verify compliance with military confidence-building and arms control measures, to provisions for human and minority rights, the OSCE has increasingly insisted on “transparency” and on the right to intervene in the affairs of a member state to implement those principles to which that state has subscribed. In short, the Helsinki decalogue weakened the absolute nature of state sovereignty to a far greater degree than was envisaged at the time the Final Act was signed in 1975.

The second value conflict became paramount only in the period since the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. As the 15 Union Republics of the USSR achieved statehood while five independent states emerged out of the six republics of the former Yugoslavia, regional and ethnic groups in many of these new states also claimed the right to self-determination. Believing that they had been deprived of this right by the essentially arbitrary way in which the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia had been divided historically, many ethnically distinct regions in the

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

new states also proclaimed their independence and sovereignty on the basis of the right to self-determination. This came into direct conflict with the desire of the OSCE to recognize the territorial integrity of all existing and new member states regardless of how their borders had been drawn in the past. The inability to reconcile the principle of the territorial integrity of new states with the claims for self-determination by minorities existing within and across the borders between these new states has been one of the most significant factors accounting for the widespread violence in the region since 1989.

In addition to the three baskets, the Helsinki Final Act called for a series of follow-up conferences to review progress in implementation of the Final Act and to consider new provisions to strengthen security in Europe. The first CSCE Review Conference in Belgrade in 1977–1978 was characterized largely by rhetorical attacks and counterattacks, with Western governments criticizing the human rights performance of the communist bloc countries, and the latter accusing the former of blatant interference in their internal affairs. Nonetheless, this meeting did set a precedent for legitimizing CSCE involvement in the internal affairs of member states when they might have consequences for regional security.

The second follow-on meeting began in Madrid in 1980 and lasted for more than three years. At the outset it, too, was stalemated by the intensified debate over human rights and intervention in internal affairs. The Western governments at first refused to move forward on proposals to reinforce confidence-building measures and other provisions to increase security until the situations in Poland and Afghanistan were resolved to their satisfaction and until the general human rights picture improved in the Eastern bloc. However, before adjourning in 1983, the Madrid conference did eventually take up proposals to strengthen confidence-building measures and establish machinery for the peaceful resolution of disputes. Of particular significance was the adoption of a mandate for negotiations in Stockholm under CSCE auspices, known officially as the Conference on Security- and Confidence-Building Measures and Disarmament in Europe. In addition, working meetings were set up to deal with human rights and fundamental freedoms in Ottawa, human contacts in Bern, the peaceful settlement of disputes in Athens, cultural contacts in Budapest, and Mediterranean security issues in Venice. While few actual decisions were taken in Madrid, the CSCE process at least regained momentum.

This momentum carried through into the third follow-on conference, which began in Vienna on November 4, 1986. Mikhail Gorbachev’s ascent to power in Moscow only several months before was evident in the improved climate of East-West relations within the CSCE. Thus, the Vienna conference, which lasted until January 1989, responded to the rapidly

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

changing political scene in Central and Eastern Europe and began to adapt the European security framework to the new environment even before the definitive end of the Cold War. Virtually all baskets of the Helsinki Final Act were strengthened, confidence-building measures were further extended, and numerous conferences were spawned to deal with the rapidly changing security environment.10

With the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, the CSCE rapidly began to adapt to the new post-Cold War security environment in Europe. Suddenly the possibility of creating a genuine system of “collective security” on the European continent appeared to be feasible. Two major documents were produced by the CSCE in the first year after the end of the Cold War that fundamentally changed the normative and institutional structure of European security.11 The first of these was a report of an expert meeting held in Copenhagen in June 1990 on the human dimension of security that attempted to apply the essential features of Western democratic practices to the entire continent. Specifically, it called for free elections leading to representative governments in all CSCE states open to observation by all member states, equality before the law, freedom to establish political parties, and rights of accused persons.12

The second major document was the “Charter of Paris for a New Europe,” signed at a summit meeting held November 19–21, 1990. In addition to reaffirming the acquis of the CSCE from the Helsinki Final Act through the various follow-on conferences and expert meetings, the Charter of Paris began the formal institutionalization of the CSCE. Having met as an itinerant series of conferences without permanent headquarters or secretariat, the Paris meeting established a secretariat in Prague (later moved to Vienna). In addition, a Conflict Prevention Center was created in Vienna, an Office for Free Elections (subsequently renamed the Office for Democratic Institution and Human Rights—ODIHR) was set up in Warsaw, and a Parliamentary Assembly, made up of parliamentarians from all member states, was created. Annual meetings were to be held at the level of foreign ministers, summits were to be held biannually, and a Committee of Senior Officials would prepare ministerial meetings and could call emergency meetings when required. In short, the CSCE began to take on most of the traditional features of an established international organization rather than a series of ad hoc meetings about security issues.

The next major milestone in the post-Cold War expansion of the CSCE came with the follow-on conference and summit in Helsinki in 1992. This was the first meeting at which all of the former Soviet and Yugoslav countries plus Albania participated as full members, increasing the total number of member states to 53.13 The Helsinki conference was preoccupied with the wave of violence that was sweeping across the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and it sought to engage the organization more

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

actively both to prevent the future outbreak of such conflicts and to manage and resolve those that had already broken out. The flagrant violation of CSCE principles by the Serbs during the fighting in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina led to sanctions being imposed on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, including its suspension from active participation in the CSCE.

One of the most significant accomplishments in Helsinki was the adoption of a proposal by the Netherlands to create the Office of the High Commissioner on National Minorities. Based in the Hague, the high commissioner was mandated to engage in early warning, preventive diplomacy, and informal conciliation in an effort to prevent and resolve some of the most significant conflicts that have emerged in Eurasia since the end of the Cold War, where the status and treatment of ethnonational minorities is a major issue. In addition, a Court of Conciliation and Arbitration was created, based in Geneva, with voluntary membership; many key member states have declined to participate, and in the initial six years of its existence it has not taken up any cases. Finally, the Forum for Security Cooperation meets regularly in Vienna to provide a venue for discussion of long-term issues of common security and to negotiate additional confidence-building and arms control measures.

Another major advance taken in Helsinki was the decision to establish missions in areas of tension to provide for “early warning, conflict prevention and crisis management (including fact-finding and rapporteur missions and CSCE peace-keeping) [and] peaceful settlement of disputes.” The original intent of the heads of state assembled in Helsinki appeared to largely be to create temporary, more or less ad hoc, missions to deal with conflicts as they arose. However, especially because of continued worsening of the situation in the former Yugoslavia, the Committee of Senior Officials decided to create so-called missions of long duration, the first few of which were to be sent to monitor the situation in three regions of the former Republic of Yugoslavia—Kosovo, Sandjak, and Vojvodina.14 From this time on these missions were normally mandated for periods of six months, although the mandates have generally been renewed every six months with the sole exception of the first mission in Serbia, which was not extended because of objections from the government in Belgrade.

The next significant stage in the institutional development of the organization took place at the Rome Ministerial in 1993, which created the Permanent Council, which meets weekly throughout the year to conduct all business between the annual ministerial or summit conferences. It is staffed by permanent delegations of the member states, usually headed by ambassadors, and carries on the continuing work of the organization, especially regarding conflict prevention, management, resolution, and

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

postconflict rehabilitation. At the Budapest Summit in 1994 the member states agreed that the CSCE had become sufficiently institutionalized with a permanent secretariat and associated organs that it could be renamed the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe and declare itself to be a regional security organization under Chapter VIII of the United Nations (UN) Charter. This change, however, did not affect the status of the OSCE as a political rather than a legal organization, and it did not grant it a collective legal status under international law. In addition, the Budapest Summit adopted a Code of Conduct on Politico-Military Aspects of Security, which created a normative framework for all aspects of military activity in the region, including civil-military relations, the conduct of warfare, and the behavior of military personnel in combat.

Ever since becoming institutionalized formally in 1995, the OSCE has remained a small organization. Its entire budget for 1998 was about 950 million Austrian shillings ($76 million), over a third of which was allocated solely to OSCE activities in Bosnia (not including, of course, the costs of the NATO-led Stabilization Force, SFOR, which were many times greater than the entire OSCE annual budget). The largest single item, about 40 percent of the overall budget, went to support the 14 OSCE missions and field activities. The entire staff, including interpreters, amounts to about 160 persons, making the OSCE an extremely lean international organization in comparison with its responsibilities.15

The U.S. government, nevertheless, has generally assumed a cautious approach to the CSCE and its successor, the OSCE. Indeed, U.S. officials were skeptical about the process even during the initial negotiation of the Helsinki Final Act, where, as John Maresca notes, “the United States, deeply involved in bilateral negotiations with the USSR, relegated the CSCE to the second rank.”16 The U.S. government has remained cautious about the potential of the CSCE/OSCE ever since, even though, ironically, the United States subsequently became one of the organization’s most active members and its largest financial supporter. Throughout the Cold War period the United States regarded the CSCE mostly as a forum to attack the record of the Soviet Union and other communist bloc governments on human rights. Even in the post-Cold War period there appear to be several reasons for the lukewarm attitude of the United States toward the OSCE, especially at higher levels in the foreign policy and national security bureaucracies.17 The OSCE is often seen as a distinct competitor with NATO for primacy in providing for security in Europe. American officials frequently believe that whatever strengthens one organization weakens at least the relative influence of the other.

In this competition Washington usually prefers NATO for several reasons. First, U.S. policy makers generally believe that in times of crisis it will be easier for NATO to take a decision than the OSCE. Although both

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

organizations require consensus to make decisions, the broader membership of the OSCE may make consensus harder to achieve in Vienna than in Brussels, where American influence has traditionally been more strongly represented. Americans especially fear that the OSCE may be paralyzed by a Russian veto on important security matters, just as the UN Security Council has been in the past. Second, U.S. policy makers generally perceive that the OSCE lacks appropriate means to implement its decisions. Although the OSCE has played an important role in political and humanitarian spheres in Bosnia, for example, it depended on the support of the NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR) and subsequently the SFOR to provide security for its own personnel, especially election monitors, to say nothing of Bosnian citizens. Since the OSCE does not have and has never raised peacekeeping forces, these policy makers believe that the OSCE’s dependence on other institutions for providing the muscle needed to carry out its decisions is likely to weaken its effectiveness.

On the other hand, the agreements on Kosovo brokered by Richard Holbrooke in October 1998 assigned a major role to an OSCE force that was intended to reach some 2,000 civilian monitors to observe Belgrade’s withdrawal of security forces and the disarmament of the Kosovo Liberation Army, representing by far the largest mission undertaken to date by the OSCE. Indeed, it appears that the Serbs and their Russian supporters were willing to acquiesce in an OSCE role in Kosovo at a time when Russia was not prepared to support a UN Security Council resolution authorizing NATO to take military action to dissuade Serb leaders from attacking the Kosovar population. Even though this Kosovo Verification Mission had to be withdrawn in late March 1999, when NATO began a full-scale aerial assault on Yugoslavia, U.S. officials continued to envision a significant role for the OSCE to assist in the repatriation of Kosovar Albanian refugees following the cessation of hostilities.

Despite the skepticism of some U.S. officials, the OSCE had become by the end of the twentieth century an institutionalized European security organization. It is charged with dealing with a wide range of activities: preventing violent conflicts, mediating cease-fires, helping to resolve conflicts in regions that had previously experienced violence, and helping to rebuild security in the aftermath of traumatic conflicts. How well it has performed these tasks is very much a subject of debate. As Stern and Druckman (Chapter 2) point out, evaluating the success of interventions in conflict situations is a tricky business, especially since the criteria for defining success are themselves so murky. Furthermore, apparent short-run failures may turn out over time to contribute to a long-term solution to underlying issues of conflict, whereas short-term solutions may break down readily and actually exacerbate conflicts over the long run. My task in this chapter is further complicated by the problem of equifinality—

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

namely, that any particular outcome may be accounted for by a combination of factors, and it is extremely difficult to ferret out the extent to which the involvement of the OSCE may have played a determinative role. Therefore, in the analysis that follows, it is neither fair to give OSCE all the credit for the successful outcomes of crises where it intervened nor to attribute exclusive blame for its apparent failure to solve other complex problems.

Nonetheless, in the remainder of this chapter I assess the contributions that OSCE interventions into conflict situations have made in avoiding or ending violence, on the one hand, or averting escalation to higher levels of violence, on the other hand. I focus on the principal instruments that the OSCE uses to intervene in conflict situations, primarily the missions of long-term duration, the high commissioner on national minorities, and the chairman-in-office. While I will occasionally discuss specific techniques that these OSCE representatives have used in their interventions, my main focus is directed toward an assessment of the role that a regional security organization may play to monitor and assist parties confronting different stages of the conflict process. Thus, this chapter does not emphasize assessment of particular intervention techniques, in contrast to other chapters in this volume, but instead concentrates on the general argument about the role of multilateral security institutions in lessening the extent and severity of conflict and in promoting the development of a regional security regime.

Finally, since this chapter deals primarily with conflicts in post-Cold War Eurasia, I focus mostly on intrastate conflicts, as opposed to interstate conflicts. The general OSCE role has been defined in terms of responding to internal conflicts that threaten the peace and security of neighboring states and surrounding regions. Indeed, most of the violence that has erupted in this region since the end of the Cold War has carried significant implications for regional security extending well beyond the borders of the states where violence has broken out. Sometimes this is manifested in irredentist claims to unify regions of newly created states with other states (e.g., Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia, South Ossetia with North Ossetia in the Russian Federation, Kosovo with Albania, Crimea with Russia). On other occasions, violence threatens to spread due to the presence of ethnic groups in regions that cut across international borders (e.g., Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia, Albanians in Kosovo and in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Russians and Ukrainians in the Transdniester region of Moldova). Finally, there is a more general concern about the apparent “contagion” of conflicts in unstable regions such as the Caucasus, parts of Central Asia, and the Balkans. In short, the neat distinction between interstate conflicts and intrastate conflicts has been blurred in the postcommunist region. There-

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

fore, the following analysis treats the role of the OSCE as a regional security organization that has intervened in numerous conflicts in the Eurasian region, whenever those conflicts—regardless of their origins—have implications for regional or international security.

This section examines OSCE activities in four regions to illustrate some of the ways in which the OSCE has been successful in its conflict management activities and other instances where so far the outcomes have fallen short of expectations. These cases were also selected to illustrate some of the most important functions identified in Table 14.1 that the OSCE has undertaken in regions of conflict since the end of the Cold War: (1) monitoring, early warning, and conflict prevention to head off incipient violence (Crimea in Ukraine); (2) negotiation of cease-fires in ongoing conflicts (Chechnya in the Russian Federation); (3) preventing the reignition of violence and assisting the resolution of underlying issues in conflict situations (Transdniestria in Moldova); and (4) postconflict security building (Albania).

Monitoring, Early Warning, and Conflict Prevention— The Case of Crimea in Ukraine

Principles

The principal focus of OSCE’s conflict prevention activities is to identity and respond to brewing conflicts to prevent the outbreak of violence. These activities are most intensive in times of unstable peace, including both conditional and precarious peace, when the possibility of violence looms somewhere over the horizon. The view that conflicts are easier to resolve before they become violent than afterward has been expressed forcefully by Max van der Stoel, the OSCE high commissioner on national minorities:

It is evident from the experience of Bosnia, of Chechnya, of Nagorno-Karabakh, of Georgia and elsewhere, that once a conflict has erupted, it is extremely difficult to bring it to an end. In the meantime, precious lives have been lost, new waves of hatred have been created and enormous damage has been inflicted.19

As van der Stoel suggests, once Humpty Dumpty has fallen from his wall, it is extremely difficult to put him back together again. So it is with states; once conflicts reach the stage of violence, peaceful accommodation

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

may become extremely difficult to achieve. Indeed, negotiation theory suggests that the situation may not be “ripe” for negotiation until a “hurting stalemate” has set in, at which time the situation “has become uncomfortable to both sides and…appears likely to become very costly.”20 At this point, by definition both parties have suffered great losses and have become sufficiently desperate so that solutions that previously might have been unacceptable become more palatable. Instead of waiting for the typical cycle of violence eventually followed by a hurting stalemate to run its course, preventive diplomacy seeks to identify an earlier point to intervene before a conflict turns violent in the first place. Intervention at this stage is more likely to lead to mutual accommodation than after a period of violence and even after a hurting stalemate is mutually recognized by the disputing parties. Lund has enumerated some of the most important advantages of early intervention:

[T]he issues in the dispute are fewer and less complex; conflicting parties are not highly mobilized, polarized, and armed; significant bloodshed has not occurred, and thus a sense of victimization and a desire for vengeance are not intense; the parties have not begun to demonize and stereotype each other; moderate leaders still maintain control over extremist tendencies; and the parties are not so committed that compromise involves loss of face.21

One difficulty with preventive diplomacy, however, is that there is often only a very narrow “window of opportunity” during which parties may intervene to prevent the outbreak of violence. At early stages in a conflict, the signals of a developing confrontation may be so ambiguous that the gravity of the situation may not be recognized. Furthermore, premature intervention may create a “self-fulfilling prophecy” by focusing attention on the conflict in the minds of disputing parties or by legitimizing radical political leaders, such as extreme nationalists. At the same time, if outside parties wait too long before intervening, the threshold of violence may be crossed, delaying efforts to mediate until a hurting stalemate has set in. Timing the engagement of preventive diplomacy is thus an extremely critical yet elusive factor in the etiology of a conflict.

The first requisite for effective preventive diplomacy is “early warning” to detect situations that might lead to violent conflict. Protests, demonstrations, and riots may provide early warning, as may actions by governments to suppress dissent. Parties to disputes may come directly to OSCE missions and field offices to report threats to the peace that they have witnessed or experienced. Indicators of incipient conflicts may include nationalist claims to establish separatist regimes, irredentist claims of secession and unification with another state, concerns about the possible “spillover” of an ongoing conflict across international borders into

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

neighboring states, and warnings about potential unauthorized external intervention in ongoing internal conflicts in member states.

Early warning is not enough to trigger an appropriate response, however. There must be a capability of separating real dangers from “false alarms.” As George and Holl have noted, the problem for preventive diplomacy is often not the inability to identify potential trouble spots but rather one of “understanding such situations well enough to forecast which ones are likely to explode and when.”22 However good their intentions may be, states and multilateral organizations may antagonize important constituencies with too many cries of “wolf.” They may alienate parties if they try to intervene in situations that do not seem to warrant such a drastic response. And they may exhaust both the willpower and the limited resources of regional security organizations if they try to intervene in more conflicts than they can handle at any one time.23

Once the incipient crisis has been recognized, the next and often more difficult problem is to mobilize inside parties to enter into direct negotiations or outside parties to intervene. As George and Holl have pointed out, “early warning does not necessarily make for easy response. On the contrary, available warning often forces policy makers to confront decisions of a difficult or unpalatable character.”24 The warning must be rapidly delivered to the central OSCE institutions in Vienna, the Hague, or Warsaw and to key member governments. Once they attend to these warnings, there must also exist a political will among member governments and the OSCE authorities to respond to those warnings. It is then necessary to decide on an appropriate response, whether it will take the form of verbal protest or denunciation, imposition of sanctions, creation of a mission of long-term duration, intervention by a third party to provide good offices or to assist in mediation, deployment of monitoring or even peacekeeping operations, or activation of any other means at the disposal of the OSCE.

The principal organs of the OSCE available to perform this conflict prevention function include the chairman-in-office, who may decide to call the OSCE into action or may intervene directly himself or through his special representatives; the Conflict Prevention Center, which receives warnings from the OSCE missions and offices in the field about brewing conflicts and offers suggestions or instructions about how to respond; the high commissioner on national minorities, who may travel to areas of potential conflict involving national minority issues on a moment’s notice and issue warnings to the Permanent Council or, in cases of great urgency, may intervene himself to try to assist the disputants to resolve their conflicts; and the Permanent Council, which generally receives reports from the Conflict Prevention Center, the high commissioner on national minorities, and the field missions which may decide to authorize

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

special mission activities, dispatch a special representative, impose sanctions on disputing parties, and even call for the creation of an observation or peacekeeping force, as was agreed to by the chairman-in-office, Polish Foreign Minister Bronoslaw Geremek, as part of the agreement regarding Kosovo in October 1998.

The Crimea Case

The OSCE has undertaken several conflict prevention activities in regions where conflict appeared to be escalating and where the risk of large-scale violence was significant. One such situation, where the OSCE appears to have played an important role in heading off escalating violence, was the situation in Ukraine. The region of Crimea, populated by about 67 percent ethnic Russians, had been part of the Russian Federation until it was given as a “gift” by Nikita Khrushchev to the Ukraine in 1954. This change in status made little practical difference until the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Crimean Russians suddenly found themselves to be a minority in the new Ukrainian state. Tensions between the Crimean authorities and Kiev reached a crisis level in January 1994 when Yuri Meshkov, a nationalistic Russian, was elected as the first president of Crimea. He immediately proposed changing the Crimean constitution and declaring independence, which set off a strong response among Ukrainians who wanted to preserve the territorial integrity of the Ukrainian state. The OSCE high commissioner on national minorities, Max van der Stoel, visited Ukraine in February and May 1994. As a result of those visits, he recommended the creation of an OSCE mission of long duration in Ukraine, with a branch office in Crimea. The mission was established in June 1994 with a mandate to assist in settling the status of Crimea as an autonomous region within the state of Ukraine.

In September 1994 Crimean President Meshkov unilaterally abolished the Supreme Council of Crimea as well as local councils. However, the Presidium of the Supreme Council of Crimea declared that Meshkov’s actions violated the laws of both Crimea and Ukraine. President Kuchma of Ukraine also stepped in and told both Meshkov and Sergei Tsekov, chair of the Supreme Council, that he would “not allow the use of force to settle the conflict between the branches of government in Crimea.” He ordered Deputy Prime Minister Marchuk to go to Crimea to mediate in negotiations between the Crimean president and parliament.25 The Ukrainian Rada (parliament) simultaneously passed a law giving Crimea only until November 1 to bring its constitution fully in line with the Ukrainian constitution.

In early 1995 the Supreme Council of Crimea ratcheted up its defiance by declaring that the state property of Ukraine in Crimea belonged to

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Crimea and by threatening to hold a referendum on independence during the April 1995 municipal elections. The Ukrainian Rada, in response, tried to dismantle Crimean autonomy altogether. On March 17, 1995, it annulled the 1992 Crimean constitution and abolished the Crimean presidency, its law on the constitutional court, and its election laws while also bringing criminal charges against President Meshkov. President Kuchma also decreed that the Crimean government was to be fully subordinated to the Ukrainian government. The two authorities appeared to be on a collision course with potentially violent consequences. In response, Sergei Tsekov, speaker of the Crimean parliament, called on the OSCE to make an assessment of the decisions taken by the Ukrainian parliament in the light of international law.

The OSCE mission began intensive consultations with Ukrainian officials, and a meeting of OSCE ambassadors was held at the Hungarian Embassy in Kiev. They arrived at a mixed conclusion. On the one hand, they found that Ukrainian authorities had generally acted within their constitutional authority and that many of the decisions taken by the Rada had been provoked by Crimean separatists. They noted that Crimean autonomy remained intact, even though the central government had substantially increased its veto power over decisions taken by the regional authority. On the other hand, they deplored the abrogation of the Crimean local election laws that had guaranteed multiparty representation, especially for Tatars and other minorities, far more effectively than the Ukrainian election laws. They expressed concern that the Rada’s actions had provoked an escalation of tensions and the possible radicalization of Crimean Russians. They further urged the restoration of Crimea’s autonomy status of 1992, concluding with the following observation:

[N]o efforts should be spared by the OSCE, by the HCNM and the Mission to Ukraine, also by the Council of Europe, to point out to Ukrainian authorities the urgency of establishing a Constitutional Court system as guarantor not only of a meaningful Autonomy Status for Crimea but also for a substantive Ukrainian democracy based on Council of Europe standards. It is highly unsatisfactory to have the Ukrainian Parliament play lonely and supreme “judge” of constitutional frictions between Kiev and Simferopol.26

The OSCE head of mission, Andreas Kohlschütter, warned external parties not to interfere in the situation, presumably referring to the possible actions by politicians and military authorities in the Russian Federation to support the Russian community in Crimea. In this vein he argued for a major effort by the OSCE to promote dialogue and to introduce a voice of “moderation and compromise into the decision-making process on all sides.”27

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

As a result, the high commissioner on national minorities stepped up his activity in the region and became actively engaged as a “go between” to help the parties make their constitutions consistent with each other. High Commissioner van der Stoel organized a conference in Locarno, Switzerland, on May 11–14, 1995, which came on the heels of an announcement by the Crimean parliament of its intention to hold a referendum on the reinstatement of the 1992 constitution. On May 15 the high commissioner proposed a formula that recommended drafting parallel language in the constitutions of Crimea and Ukraine to grant Crimea irrevocable autonomy in many key areas, a right to appeal to the Ukrainian Constitutional Court if it considered that Ukrainian legislation infringed on its autonomy, while also acknowledging Crimea’s status as an autonomous republic within the state of Ukraine. He also proposed that the parliaments of Ukraine and Crimea create “an organ of conciliation with the task of suggesting solutions to differences arising in the course of the dialogue about relevant legislation.”28 These recommendations were generally well received in Kiev.29 Based on this success, a second roundtable was held in September 1995 in Yalta focusing on the narrower topic of the reintegration of deported peoples (Tatars) returning to Crimea. In 1996 the high commissioner focused on both the constitutional issue and provisions for the education of minorities (both Ukrainians and Tatars) in Crimea.30

Meanwhile, the Crimean leadership began to acquiesce to most of Kiev’s demands.31 Not the least of the factors enabling Ukraine to preserve its territorial integrity was the fact that the Crimean separatists received little support from the Russian government. Crimea’s almost complete dependence on financial support from Kiev also made autonomous action virtually impossible to sustain. The central government successfully gained control of the law enforcement agencies in Crimea, and Kiev successfully maneuvered to have sympathetic individuals selected to the posts of prime minister and speaker of the parliament in Crimea.32 This more moderate Crimean leadership was also more inclined to follow the recommendations of the OSCE’s high commissioner.

On November 1, 1995, a new constitution on the status of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea was adopted that incorporated many of the suggestions from the Locarno conference, although it failed to guarantee representation for the Crimean Tatar community as the high commission had encouraged.33 The OSCE mission also urged the government in Kiev to institute economic development projects in fields such as tourism in Crimea in order to capitalize on the potential of the region. They also urged initiatives to privatize and restructure the extensive military industries located in the region that had declined following the end of the Cold War. In short the mission emphasized the importance of joint benefits

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

from the great economic potential that Crimea offered that could enrich both the center and the region itself.

By 1999 it appeared that the OSCE’s role in Crimea constituted one of its most significant successes in the field of conflict prevention. The situation was especially explosive due to the threat of Russian intervention, made more likely by the disputes between the Russian Federation and Ukraine over the status of the Black Sea Fleet based in Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, the fleet’s headquarters, which had long been a bastion of Russian military influence on the Black Sea. By intervening rapidly, the OSCE mission, supported closely by Ambassador van der Stoel, was able to strengthen the forces of moderation on both sides and push for a solution granting substantial autonomy to the region without full independence. Thus, the territorial integrity of Ukraine was preserved at the same time that the residents of Crimea achieved a substantial degree of self-determination over the most important issues of everyday life, including education, language for the conduct of official business, and local police. In this explosive situation, violence was averted in Crimea that could have escalated rapidly in the already tense situation that existed between Russia and Ukraine.

Negotiating Cease-Fires—The Case of Chechnya in the Russian Federation

Principles

The OSCE has been generally reluctant to intervene in ongoing conflicts that have taken place in the formal jurisdiction of a single member state. Typically those states contend that secessionist conflicts are internal matters. In addition, the OSCE lacks the capability for coercive inducement that other parties, such as the United States and Russia, have brought to bear to impose cease-fires in places such as Bosnia and Abkhazia. It is precisely for these reasons that the OSCE has tended to intervene more often either before conflicts turn violent or after violence has been brought to a halt.

Thus, for example, when fighting broke out in the former Yugoslavia in 1991, the CSCE Conflict Prevention Center had just been created, and no adequate mechanism existed to engage the center in direct conflict prevention or resolution activities. Therefore, at a Council of Foreign Ministers meeting in Berlin chaired by German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher in June 1991, a resolution was passed condemning Yugoslav government activities in Slovenia and Croatia. The CSCE, however, was unable to take any action, so responsibility for future involvement with this conflict was passed on to the European Union, which

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

sought to demonstrate its bona fides in dealing with conflicts on the European continent under the common foreign and security policy that was formalized in the Maastricht Treaty in December 1991. Subsequent efforts to negotiate a cease-fire in Bosnia were undertaken jointly by the European Union and the UN, represented respectively by David Owen and Cyrus Vance. Following the breakdown of their efforts, the task of mediation was taken up unilaterally by the United States under the leadership of Richard Holbrooke. The OSCE was assigned a major role in implementing the disarmament provisions of the Dayton Accords, which resulted from that effort, and in organizing, supervising, and monitoring the many elections that were to take place under the terms set out in Dayton, but it was not even represented at the negotiations that produced that agreement.

The Case of Chechnya

The only case in which the OSCE became a direct broker of a ceasefire was in the 1994–1996 war between Chechnya and the Russian Federation. Chechnya is a predominantly Sunni Muslim region in the northern Caucasus, with a population consisting largely of mountain dwellers who resisted Russian occupation for centuries. Its population in 1989 consisted of about 65 percent ethnic Chechens and 25 percent Russians, mostly living in the capital of Grozny. Following the Moscow coup attempt in August 1991, General Dzokhar Dudayev seized power in Chechnya. Shortly thereafter he declared Chechnya’s independence from Russia and refused to sign Yeltsin’s federation treaty. After a long period of political skirmishing, on December 11, 1994, approximately 40,000 Russian troops entered Chechnya, resulting in a full-scale war, by far the bloodiest of the post-Cold War conflicts in Eurasia. The war lasted off and on for some two years.

The behavior of the Russian Federation troops clearly represented a violation of many CSCE norms and principles. The massive military activity in the region, which was undertaken without the presence of international observers, represented a formal violation of the many confidence-building agreements most recently incorporated into the so-called Vienna Document 1994. Furthermore, the war began only days after the signing of the Code of Conduct at the CSCE summit in Budapest, which established extensive norms for military engagement and especially respect for the rights of noncombatants. The head of the U.S. delegation to the OSCE, Sam Brown, noted on January 12, 1995, the requirement, even in instances of internal security operations, to “take due care to avoid injury to civilians or their property.” He argued that violations of this and other principles made Russian actions in Chechnya not only an inter-

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

nal matter but rather a “legitimate issue of international concern.”34 The government in Moscow, however, maintained that this was purely an “internal affair” and opposed any formal role for the OSCE in Chechnya. Given the apparent absence of consensus in favor of intervention, the OSCE was initially paralyzed.

After much discussion and debate in Vienna, however, the OSCE Assistance Group in Chechnya was created by the Permanent Council on April 11, 1995, with a mandate to “promote the peaceful resolution of the crisis and the stabilization of the situation in the Chechen Republic in conformity with the principle of the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation and in accordance with OSCE principles.” In addition, the OSCE group was assigned to monitor compliance with the human dimension norms, including human rights, the unfettered return of refugees to their homes, and allowing for the operation of international humanitarian organizations in Chechnya. Finally, they were mandated to “promote dialogue and negotiations between the parties in order to achieve a ceasefire and eliminate sources of tensions,” the first such mandate of this kind. The OSCE Assistance Group was initially headed by a Hungarian diplomat, Sandor Meszaros, supported by a team of six members.

At the outset they found that there was little space to open productive negotiations between the parties. However, Russian and international opinion against the fighting was mobilized following an attack by Chechen guerrillas on a hospital in Budennyovsk in southern Russia in June 1995 in which numerous hostages were taken. As a result, negotiations were opened at the OSCE offices in Grozny shortly thereafter. The Russian delegation refused to accept full independence for Chechnya but did discuss informally the possibility of a formula based on “constructive ambiguity.” The Chechens agreed to a moratorium on the implementation of their declaration of independence for a period of two years while the formal status might be negotiated, whereas the Russians insisted on a moratorium of five years. The two sides then agreed to work out a military cease-fire and to leave final negotiation of a political solution to a later stage. Under the terms of this agreement, Russian forces in Chechnya were to be reduced to about 6,000 men. In exchange the Chechens would be allowed to maintain small armed self-defense units in every village until a new law enforcement organ was established. An agreement was thus signed on July 31, and a military cease-fire went into effect in the absence of a political settlement.35

The cease-fire soon broke down. Russian troops began to resume military actions against Chechen villages in the mountains, whereas Dudayev and his associates began to take advantage of the cease-fire to rearm their supporters in Grozny. The Russians refused to allow the Chechens to arm themselves in villages under their control, and Chechen appeals to the

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

OSCE to “interpret” the terms of the agreement allowing them self-defense forces in all population centers apparently had no effect. Reportedly the U.S. member of the OSCE team, Roman Wasilewski, became openly disillusioned with the inability of the OSCE to act as an assertive mediator and to insist on Russian compliance with the terms of that agreement.36 By October the cease-fire had broken down altogether.

An election was staged by Russian authorities in Chechnya on December 17, boycotted by the opposition, in which the former pro-Russian leader of Chechnya, Doku Zavgayev, was elected as head of the Chechen republic. Although the OSCE did not endorse the elections, it also failed to condemn them vigorously, even though they were not conducted under international monitoring and appeared to fall well short of normal OSCE standards. Indeed, Russian human rights activist Sergei Kovalyov was quoted as saying: “If the OSCE had insisted elections were against the interests of peace, Moscow would not have been able to go ahead with them.”37 Even the OSCE mission head acknowledged after the elections that its influence had been severely limited and that it could only be effective in the near future in the fields of humanitarian aid and human rights, not in promoting further negotiations toward another cease-fire.38

In January 1996, however, leadership of the OSCE Assistance Group in Chechnya was turned over to Ambassador Tim Guldimann of Switzerland, who took a much more activist role as a mediator between the parties to the conflict. In February he went to Moscow and met with Interior Minister Kulikov and Emil Payin, Yeltsin’s adviser on ethnic issues on the Presidential Council. The former took a hard line, insisting that Dudayev was essentially a terrorist and thus not an acceptable partner for negotiations. However, Payin was more conciliatory and appeared willing to consider negotiations with Dudayev as long as Zavgayev could also play a role and if the negotiations were mindful of the overall importance of respecting Russian sovereignty. Guldimann, on behalf of the OSCE, criticized efforts by Russian General Kulikov to create so-called zones of peace due to the disregard for human rights evidenced by Russian troops. Nonetheless the Russians continued to encourage villagers to turn over weapons in exchange for “assurances” that the Russian troops would no longer shell their villages.

On April 22, 1996, Dudayev was killed by a Russian rocket attack on the village of Gheki-Chu, which ironically came shortly after Russian President Yeltsin had indicated to Guldimann his willingness to meet with Dudayev. Leadership of the Chechen forces was then taken up by the vice president, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev. Guldimann met with him on May 9 and discussed setting up a meeting with Yeltsin. After two quick trips to Moscow to try to obtain the Russian president’s consent for such a meeting, Guldimann returned to Chechnya and informed the Chechen leadership of

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Yeltsin’s interest in arranging a meeting. On May 27 Guldimann accompanied Yandarbiyev to Moscow and, after a brief but tense dispute over the status of the Chechen leader, the two men signed an agreement on another cease-fire and exchange of prisoners. A second agreement was signed by the Russians and Chechens and witnessed by Guldimann on behalf of the OSCE on June 10 in Nazran, the capital of neighboring Ingushetia, calling for the withdrawal of all Russian troops by the end of August as well as the gradual disarmament of the Chechen side.

A few weeks later Yeltsin was reelected as president of the Russian Federation, and he appointed one of his primary opponents, former army general Alexander Lebed, as his chief security adviser. Less than a week after the second round of elections, Russian planes resumed bombing in Chechnya, and the Chechens retaliated by launching an attack on Grozny in early August and recapturing the city from Russian control. A few days later General Lebed traveled secretly to Chechnya and met with the Chechen chief of staff Maskhadov; they agreed to a truce in the fighting. Lebed abandoned all support for the puppet Russian regime under Zavgayev and made several subsequent trips to Chechnya. On August 22 he signed another cease-fire agreement with Maskhadov. Finally, on August 31, OSCE Assistance Group head Guldimann arranged for a formal meeting between Lebed and Maskhadov in Khasavyurt, in neighboring Dagestan.39 The agreement signed there largely reflected the results of Guldimann’s activity as mediator. It deferred a final settlement of Chechnya’s future for five years, until the end of 2001, during which time the two sides would negotiate about their relationship. Russian troops would fully withdraw by the end of December, and a joint commission would be set up to govern the economy. The OSCE was given an important role in the implementation of this agreement. On January 27, 1997, presidential and parliamentary elections were held in Chechnya, monitored by 72 observers from the OSCE, and Asian Maskhadov was elected president.

Subsequently, the attention of the OSCE mission in Chechnya shifted to postconflict rehabilitation. Tragically, however, this effort never really got off the ground. The damage done to the economy, infrastructure, and the social structure of Chechen society by the war was too much to overcome. For example, roughly 70 percent of the potential work force was left unemployed, most schools were closed, and large numbers of light weapons were widely dispersed throughout the region. Thus, while the peace agreement brought an end to fighting between Russians and Chechens and the election under OSCE observation of a new president and parliament, it did not bring lasting security to Chechnya. By the end of 1997 the security situation in Chechnya had deteriorated to the point where the OSCE Assistance Group remained as the only international

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

organization—governmental or nongovernmental—to be operating in Chechnya with foreign personnel. The OSCE mission continued to report from Chechnya and to try to assist in securing the release of a significant number of international aid workers who had been kidnapped in Chechnya, but the governments of both Russia (which essentially withdrew altogether) and Chechnya were incapable of establishing law and order in the republic. In short, the OSCE’s success in brokering an end to the war between Russia and Chechnya was not followed up by a successful effort to rebuild Chechnya in the aftermath of the fighting.

Responsibility for this failure, however, does not lie primarily with the OSCE. The feudal nature of the clan system in Chechnya had produced a strong warrior class, and the end of the war with Russia did not bring an end to this spirit of combat. Furthermore, the war itself, especially the way in which the Russian Army savagely attacked the civilian population and infrastructure of Chechnya, left the region in ruins after the end of the fighting. In the midst of vast destruction, a shattered economy, and an education system left in total shambles, little remained in Chechnya except a heavily armed population living in desperate conditions where survival was problematic. The state of anarchy that descended on Chechnya after the cease-fire thus appears to have been primarily a consequence of Russian action during the war. The net result, however, was that the cease-fire in Chechnya brought little in the way of security to the people living there, and conditions in postconflict Chechnya remained among the most desperate of any place in the world.

Any overall evaluation of the OSCE role in the Chechen conflict thus must remain mixed. Initially, the OSCE reacted hesitantly to violations of its norms and principles by one of its most important member states. The desire to achieve consensus and the fear of a de facto Russian veto largely paralyzed the OSCE during the first few months of the fighting. Early efforts to contain the conflict seemed to many critics in fact to legitimate Russian actions in defense of their territorial integrity. However, once Russian military excesses became apparent to all, especially as the OSCE mission was taken over by an activist mission head, the OSCE played a much more proactive and effective role in mediating several cease-fires and an eventual peace agreement between the warring parties. However, the disappearance of all Russian influence in Chechnya and the inability of the Maskhadov government to establish legitimate authority over the many factions in postwar Chechnya, meant that the OSCE was largely powerless to reverse the trend toward anarchy. Therefore, although the OSCE can justifiably claim success in mediating an end to the 1994–1996 Chechen war, albeit after several failed attempts, it was unable to move into the next phase of postconflict rehabilitation due largely to factors outside its control. Judged by the overall outcome as of early 1999, there-

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

fore, the OSCE mission can be viewed as having played a positive role in bringing an end to the intense fighting between Russian and Chechen forces but as having fallen short of its goal of restoring a secure environment in which Chechens can reestablish anything approximating a normal livelihood.

Prevention of the Renewal of Violence and Conflict Resolution— The Case of Transdniestria in Moldova

Principles

In those regions that experienced violent conflict followed by tense stalemate the OSCE has focused on managing the situation in order to avert the reappearance of violence and to resolve the underlying issues that led to conflict in the first place. The kind of situations the OSCE has confronted in the former communist countries have often been very challenging since they typically involve questions of ethnic or national identity. A person’s sense of identity may be defined by the social group with which he or she affiliates subjectively, which gives that individual a feeling of having a place in the universe of social relations. Ethnopolitical conflicts almost always develop because at least one group thinks that its identity is problematic, perhaps even at risk of being extinguished. At moments of social and political upheaval these identities may be especially vulnerable. Such conflicts cannot easily be resolved through bargaining involving concessions, tradeoffs, or other similar methods. Instead, as Zartman has emphasized, it is usually necessary to establish an identity formula that guarantees protection of the identity of the vulnerable group. It requires “an identity principle to hold its people together and to give cognitive content to the institutional aspects of legitimacy and sovereignty. Without such a regime it will fall apart in continuing and renewed conflict; without an identity principle it becomes merely a bureaucratic administration with no standard terms for expressing allegiance.”40 And such an identity principle is more likely to be discovered through a problem-solving rather than a bargaining approach to negotiations.41 In this method the parties must treat the conflict as a problem to be solved jointly with the other parties rather than as a conflict to be “won.” Bargaining generally works best when a dispute involves values that can be traded and exchanged, aggregated and disaggregated, on the basis of well-defined interests. By contrast, when conflicts revolve around irreducible values and identities, a different process is required, one that encourages a creative search for identity principles.42 Yet it is precisely this kind of search process that is most difficult for parties to enter into when they are in the midst of a conflict in which their identity as a “people” or “nation” is at stake.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Therefore, constructive intervention by a third party in situations of this kind can assist the parties to adopt a negotiating approach that stands a reasonable chance of resolving their differences. Third parties may assist the disputants in refraining the issues so that they no longer appear to be “zero-sum” in nature, help them to overcome stereotyped images of their adversaries, aid them to locate possible formulas that merge their joint interests rather than divide them, or even provide assistance in making concessions that will not entail losing face or opening oneself to exploitation by the other party.43 Thus, the third party may assist the disputants to find ways to resolve their conflict that they would be unlikely to stumble on by themselves.

Within the OSCE, these third-party roles may be played by key individuals such as the chairman-in-office, the high commissioner on national minorities, or a head of mission, all of whom assume a special role as a representative of a regional international organization whose principles have been subscribed to by all states involved in the ongoing dispute. What matters in the eventual success of the OSCE intervention is usually the ability of the individual or team to assist the parties to move away from hard bargaining based on competing interests and into a problem-solving mode. The third-party role is thus primarily one of facilitating the negotiation process, although of course in doing so the third party may also assist in the discovery and formulation of solutions to the conflict or ways to prevent its mutually destructive escalation.

The Moldova Case

OSCE officials have played a role as a mediator between central governments and secessionist regions in a number of conflicts, especially in three cases—in Georgia (mainly South Ossetia), Azerbaijan (Nagorno Karabakh), and Moldova (Transdniestria). Here I shall illustrate this function with reference to the mission in Moldova, which was created on February 4, 1993. The mission’s mandate called for it “to facilitate the achievement of a lasting, comprehensive political settlement of the conflict in all its aspects…” including “reinforcement of the territorial integrity of the Republic of Moldova along with an understanding about a special status for the Trans-Dniester region.”

The history of the region on the east bank of the Dniester River made it somewhat distinct from the rest of Moldova, since it had been part of the Russian Empire as long ago as the eighteenth century, while the rest of Moldova had been part of the Russian province of Bessarabia and later part of Romania. Furthermore, about two-thirds of the population of this region is made up of Russian- and Ukrainian-speaking peoples, and a good deal of industry was built there during Soviet times, so that even the

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

ethnic Moldovans living there were generally more “Sovietized” than their compatriots living west of the Dniester River. Finally, the Russian 14th Army was (and still is) stationed in this region.

During the Gorbachev period, Moldovan nationalists began calling for independence from the Soviet Union, and some even called for unification with Romania. The Moldovan language, which had been written in the Cyrillic alphabet in Soviet times, was renamed Romanian and written in the Roman alphabet. The residents east of the Dniester resisted these moves and responded to Moldovan calls for independence by declaring themselves to be the Transdniester Moldovian Soviet Socialist Republic within the Soviet Union, and their leadership continued to proclaim its loyalty to the Soviet Union even after its collapse. In the spring of 1992 the authorities in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital, insisted on the primacy of Moldovan law throughout the country. When they attempted to implement this decision by force, fighting broke out between the Moldovan army and the Transdniestrian Republican Guard supported by elements of the Russian 14th Army.

A cease-fire was reached in Moscow on July 6–7, 1992, after approximately 800 people had lost their lives, and a peacekeeping force of Russian, Moldovan, and Transdniestrian forces was established to police the cease-fire. In the aftermath of the Moscow cease-fire agreement, the CSCE mission in Moldova was created to oversee the performance of the peacekeeping forces, report on the human rights and security situation, and assist the parties in achieving a permanent political settlement that would recognize some form of autonomy for the Transdniester region in the Moldovan state.

At the outset the CSCE mission had to be content with creating transparency and assuring that the “peacekeeping” forces would prevent a resumption of fighting along the lengthy border, which mostly coincided with the Dniester River. Nonetheless, the head of mission began informal consultations with officials on both sides of the Dniester, proposing that a special region be created as an integral part of the Moldovan state but enjoying considerable self-rule; it would have its own executive, elected assembly, and court, as well as assured representation in the national parliament, executive, and court system in Chisinau. The mission identified three governing principles for a settlement: (1) the need for a single economic, social, and legal space; (2) the principle of subsidiarity under which anything that does not need to be decided at the central level would revert to the regional or local levels; and (3) the promotion of mutual trust. It then proposed three categories of jurisdictions: (1) those residing exclusively in the central authority, (2) those shared between the center and the region, and (3) those falling exclusively within the regional jurisdiction.44 Finally, it noted that Transdniestria should be given a right

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

to external self-determination if Moldova should ever decide to merge with Romania.

Direct negotiations between President Snegur of Moldova and Igor Smirnov, self-proclaimed president of Transdniestria, based on these principles articulated by the OSCE mission, opened on April 9, 1994. They agreed to set up a working group made up of five experts from each party along with representatives of the OSCE and the Russian Federation. A second summit on April 28 concluded with the signature by Snegur and Smirnov of a “joint declaration on principles for the settlement of Transdniestrian dispute.” The expert group’s negotiations got under way shortly thereafter and continued to meet regularly. The OSCE’s high commissioner on national minorities also became active in Moldova and Transdniestria in December 1994, concentrating mostly on problems faced by ethnic minorities in both regions of the country.45 He especially focused on three Romanian-language schools in Transdniestria that claimed that their efforts to conduct instruction in the Latin alphabet had met with considerable harassment at the hands of Transdniestrian authorities.

After a hiatus in the negotiations between Chisinau and Tiraspol, as the two sides prepared for elections, negotiations resumed in the spring of 1995. Both sides expressed interest in a proposal to introduce Ukrainian peacekeeping forces along the cease-fire zone monitored by the OSCE. Ukraine also joined the negotiations formally as a third mediator alongside Russia and the OSCE in September 1995. However, the Tiraspol regime seemed to toughen its negotiating position whenever agreement appeared to be within reach. Hopes for a breakthrough were raised when Russian President Yeltsin invited the parties to meet in Moscow shortly before the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) summit scheduled for May 1996, and both sides set to work to try to draft a “framework document.” After considerable delay, including concessions and retractions by both sides, the agreement was ready to be signed formally in Moscow on July 1. However, one week after initialing the document, the government of Moldova made an extraordinary request to renegotiate two articles of the agreed text. They wanted to replace the basic formula defining the status of Transdniestria within the Republic of Moldova by a vague reference to continued negotiations between the parties “to establish state and legal relations between them.”46 The Moscow signing was postponed, and the OSCE focused on trying to keep the expert meetings alive and urged the Moldovan side to make a new political initiative to try to break the stalemate it had created. In an effort to achieve a breakthrough utilizing the methods of track two, or unofficial, off-the-record, diplomacy, a seminar on the conflict was held at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, from September 29 through October 6, 1996, attended by all members of the experts group, including the new OSCE

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

head of mission, Ambassador Donald Johnson. At the official level, however, negotiations largely ground to a halt.

In the spring of 1997 relations also deteriorated between the OSCE and authorities in Transdniestria. The head of mission came under personal attack for his allegedly biased approach to the mediation effort, and the authorities in Tiraspol refused to allow mission members to enter Transdniestria to carry our their mandate. Despite the criticism, Ambassador Johnson remained an outspoken critic of the Transdniestrian authorities. These tensions and accusations of bias, also voiced by members of the Russian delegation in Vienna, eventually contributed to Johnson’s replacement as head of mission by John Evans, also an American diplomat. Johnson had been caught in a difficult position. Absolute neutrality was virtually impossible for the OSCE to achieve in this case since Moldova is a member state with a vote on the OSCE Permanent Council and Transdniestria is not; furthermore, the mission’s mandate emphasizes preserving the territorial integrity of Moldova, which presupposes that complete independence for Transdniestria is out of the question. Altogether these factors create a structural asymmetry that makes it virtually impossible for the OSCE to be viewed as a strictly impartial mediator. However, this also placed a special burden on the head of mission not to compound that structural bias by creating the appearance of personal bias as well. That perception at least temporarily reduced the OSCE’s credibility as an “honest broker” in the eyes of Transdniestrian and even Russian and Ukrainian participants during a critical phase when agreement seemed to be just around the corner.

To compensate partially for the diminished status of the OSCE, Ukraine and Russia both began to take on an increasingly active third-party role throughout 1997. Ukrainian President Kuchma paid a visit to Moldova on March 11, 1997, and Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov visited on April 10–11, 1997. On that occasion Primakov virtually dictated the terms of an agreement to the parties. He pressured them to add an article to the still-unsigned memorandum committing the parties to build their relationship “in the framework of a common state within the borders of the Moldavian SSR as of January 1990.”47 This agreement was signed in Moscow on May 8, 1997, by President Lucinschi of Moldova and Igor Smirnov of Transdniestria. In addition, the three mediators—the OSCE chairman-in-office, President Yeltsin of Russia, and President Kuchma of Ukraine— signed a supplementary joint statement, originally proposed and drafted by the OSCE mission, affirming their understanding that any agreement must respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Moldova under international law.

The signature of these two documents at a high-visibility ceremony hosted by President Yeltsin appeared to unblock negotiations and to re-

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

move any ambiguity about the international status of Moldova as a single subject of international law. As a result, the OSCE mission wanted to redirect its attention to finding solutions to specific issues involving the relationship between the central government and Transdniestrian authorities, especially regarding a specific division of competencies that would define the precise nature of Transdniestria’s “special status.” On May 24 Lucinschi and Smirnov met and established a negotiating commission to meet once a week, alternating between Chisinau and Tiraspol; four working groups on foreign economic activities, customs services, education, and criminality; and an additional group to prepare a proposal regarding the role of the guarantor states, Russia and Ukraine.

In August 1997 several actions by the Transdniestrian authorities appeared to undermine the negotiations. First, they officially declared Transdniestria to be a separate customs area, thereby appearing to preempt one of the issues under negotiation. Second, they created an official commission to demarcate Transdniestria’s “frontiers” with Ukraine and Moldova, thereby seeming to undermine the fundamental agreement arrived at in Moscow just three months before. The Russian mediators, however, tried to push the negotiations forward in the hopes of having an agreement ready for signature at the summit meeting of the CIS that was scheduled to take place in Chisinau on October 22–23. At a meeting held at the Meshcherino dacha in the Moscow suburbs in early October, additional documents were drafted and initialed for signature at the Chisinau summit. However, the Transdniestrian delegation began to criticize this document even before leaving Moscow, and the frantic efforts by the mediators to salvage something from the Meshcherino document failed to produce any results. Indeed, “President” Smirnov did not attend a meeting with Yeltsin, Kuchma, and Lucinschi during the CIS summit, as planned, and no document was signed.

By February 1998 OSCE Head-of-Mission John Evans (who had replaced Donald Johnson in September 1997) noted in a report to the OSCE Permanent Council that the negotiations between Moldovan and Transdniestrian authorities seemed to have become “institutionalized.” Both sides appeared to lose any real enthusiasm for reaching a speedy agreement, and the Transdniestrian authorities gave every indication of trying to stall the process. Several factors may account for the apparent stalemate in the negotiation process that developed by the end of 1997. Despite severe economic distress, there was little evidence that the two sides had in fact become enmeshed in a mutually recognized “hurting stalemate.” On the west bank of the Dniester the Moldovan authorities had become preoccupied with their own internal political squabbles with the parliament and trying to cope with the continually deteriorating economic conditions. In the absence of violence or of any real threat to their

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

political position from the regime in Tiraspol, they had little incentive to reach a rapid solution. With the principle of the territorial integrity of Moldova, including Transdniestria, well established and endorsed by both Russian and Ukrainian leaders as well as the OSCE, they were confident in their long-run ability to preserve the formal status of Moldova as a single state, but they were less than anxious to force an immediate settlement. For their part the authorities in Tiraspol appeared to believe that the presence of the Russian 14th Army and an extensive cache of weapons under its supervision would assure their ability to retain at least de facto independence for the foreseeable future.

In summary, the case of Moldova illustrates the role that the OSCE can play as a third party in order to promote resolution of conflicts in the region where it operates. But it also illustrates dramatically the difficulties inherent in resolving conflicts in the aftermath of violence, especially when the parties to a dispute are not under strong internal pressure to reach an agreement rapidly. The division of Moldova and the appearance of a separatist regime in Transdniestria called into question the reality of the territorial integrity of the country despite the strong reaffirmation of that status in principle by virtually the entire international community. Yet the resistance of the authorities, especially those in power in Tiraspol supported by nationalist influences in Russia, prevented the OSCE from achieving a long-term resolution of the conflict, even though the OSCE undoubtedly helped to prevent the conflict from once again turning violent.

Postconflict Security Building—The Case of Albania

Principles

The OSCE has also frequently been engaged in promoting long-term peace and security in regions where conflicts have occurred and where a political settlement has been formally achieved but where the destruction of war has left a legacy of hatred and animosity, so that peace remains conditional. The effort to create a more stable peace usually involves efforts to promote reconciliation between the parties to the conflict that go beyond a formal settlement of the dispute and move them toward a deeper resolution of their differences. It may also involve assistance with building democracy in order to create nonviolent means to resolve differences that were previously settled by coercion and the threat of violence. The construction of civil society, holding of elections, assistance in the creation of new constitutions and the promotion of the rule of law, and all other aspects of the OSCE human dimension activities may be stressed in these situations.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

In addition, the OSCE has assisted in the verification of disarmament agreements between disputing parties. It arranges and provides training for institutions required to maintain law and order, especially for civilian police. Since economic distress is frequently a major obstacle to postconflict rehabilitation, the OSCE assists the parties in identifying donors to obtain external economic relief or in helping humanitarian organizations become established in zones where violence has created severe social needs. In short it provides assistance to help relieve the conditions that breed conflict and make reconciliation difficult to realize. Finally, in a number of cases the OSCE has assisted with the return of refugees and internally displaced persons to their prewar homes, for example, by advising governments on the legal provisions regarding property rights. In some cases, such as the Eastern Slavonia region of Croatia, the OSCE has worked directly with returning refugees to facilitate their return. All of these efforts are thus directed toward facilitating the further abatement of conflict and eventually the creation of a condition of stable peace.

The Case of Albania

The OSCE played a major role not only in resolving the conflict that broke out in Albania in early 1997 but also in the process of trying to rebuild political and social order after the fighting ended. This mission was created on March 27, 1997, in the aftermath of the collapse of civil order in Albania. The major precipitating event was the failure of a “pyramid scheme” supported by the government of President Berisha, which led to widespread chaos and apparently random violence throughout the country. In response to this outbreak of violence and a flood of refugees that crossed the Adriatic Sea and entered Italy, the Italian government led a “coalition of the willing” to create a small Multilateral Protection Force to enter Albania and restore order. Known as Operation Alba, it was sanctioned by both the UN and the OSCE.48

Shortly thereafter the OSCE decided to establish its presence in Albania, and one of its major tasks was to assist in the preparation, monitoring, and implementation of elections scheduled for March 9, 1998. The mandate adopted by the OSCE Permanent Council on March 27 was even broader, however, asking the mission to provide “the coordinating framework within which other international organizations can play their part in their respective areas of competence, in support of a coherent international strategy, and in facilitating improvements in the protection of human rights and basic elements of civil society.” Specific areas of OSCE specialization would include, as in many other missions, responsibility for preparing and monitoring elections; oversight of democratization, media and human rights; and monitoring the collection of weapons. The

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

fact that there was a relatively smooth transition between the military activities undertaken by Operation Alba and the new OSCE presence also contributed to the success of the mission, since the OSCE did not have to fear being dominated by this ad hoc military operation as it was to some extent in Bosnia where the large NATO-led force at times overshadowed the OSCE’s political and diplomatic operations.

Former Austrian Chancellor Franz Vranitzky was appointed head of the OSCE presence in Albania. His status in European political circles gave him access to the highest-level officials of all major European governments, enabling him to secure the support that the OSCE presence needed from key member governments. The OSCE also worked closely with the Italian-led Multilateral Protection Force, relying on it to provide the security necessary to undertake its major tasks. Despite little advance warning, the OSCE reacted rapidly and creatively to a fast-developing crisis to which other organizations, more tightly bound by bureaucracy, were unable to respond so quickly. The ODIHR was able to prepare and mount presidential elections by the scheduled date of June 29, and the elections proceeded peacefully with the selection of the opposition leader, Fatos Nano of the Social Democratic Party, as prime minister. Following the election, the OSCE mission was reduced in size, and the Multinational Protection Force was withdrawn as political stability returned for the most part to Albania. The OSCE continued to make some progress in overseeing the return of some of the 1 million to 1.5 million light weapons, mostly Kalashnikovs, looted from storehouses during the violence49 and in restoring some of the foundations for civil society in Albania. Although the situation in Albania remains precarious, there can be little doubt that the OSCE played a major role in coordinating the international response to a severe crisis in the volatile Balkan region of southeastern Europe. It thus represents the fulfillment of what Hugh Miall has appropriately characterized as “light conflict prevention,” which aims to prevent escalation or “to bring about de-escalation without necessarily addressing the deep roots of the conflict.”50

The primary reason for OSCE’s success in Albania was perhaps ironically the same factor that has hindered its success in other cases, namely its flexibility, which is in turn a function of its small staff and resource base. Yet the ability to react flexibly, under the leadership of prominent individuals and concerned and willing states, gave the OSCE a capability to respond quickly to a crisis where an international consensus existed to act but where no other international organization was able to respond in a timely fashion. The personal representative of the chairman-in-office, Franz Vranitzky, and his deputy, former Austrian Ambassador Herbert Grubmayr, were given virtual carte blanche by the OSCE to take charge of the mission, and they acted promptly and decisively. Their leadership of

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

the OSCE presence and the fact that their hands were not tied by the Permanent Council in Vienna were undoubtedly major factors in enabling the OSCE to play a significant role in putting “Humpty Dumpty back together again” in Albania. This case thus offers especially useful insights into the role that a regional security organization can play in managing crises in collapsing states located in tense regions such as the Balkans.

CONCLUSION

Strengthening the OSCE

As the preceding review of four cases of OSCE intervention in conflict situations suggests, the OSCE has successfully fulfilled several of the security functions with which it has been charged, though its record in some other activities is mixed. Two strengths of the OSCE have been evident in its most successful undertakings. One clear strength is OSCE’s broad approach to security, linking the human dimension to virtually all of its efforts to prevent the escalation and to facilitate the abatement and resolution of conflict. The OSCE has thus contributed significantly to strengthening democratic processes and institutions in countries undergoing transformation, and this activity has been helpful both in preventing conflicts from escalating and in confidence building in postconflict situations in countries such as Albania. In addition to the cases surveyed above, this strength was evident in the OSCE’s democracy-building activities in Estonia and Latvia and in its postconflict efforts in Central Asia, especially in Tajikistan.

Second, the OSCE has proven to be remarkably flexible in reacting to potential crises, which has made it possible to respond more rapidly than most other institutions and to adapt its responses more appropriately to the specific issues arising in particular cases. Innovative individuals have had the freedom to engage in problem-solving efforts to prevent and resolve conflicts. This may be illustrated by the rapid intervention by High Commissioner on National Minorities Max van der Stoel in the Crimean situation in Ukraine; the active leadership of Ambassador Tim Guldimann as head of the OSCE Assistance Group in Chechnya to mediate an end to the war with the Russian Federation; and the leadership shown by Franz Vranitzky as head of the OSCE presence in Albania to prevent the collapse of that country, which almost certainly would have further destabilized the fragile Balkan region. The OSCE has thus provided the necessary institutional support and legitimacy for the efforts of talented and innovative individuals to broker solutions to complex problems in several significant conflicts.

Conversely, the OSCE has been less successful in several of its other tasks. So far it has largely failed to mediate long-term solutions to issues

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

underlying conflicts after large-scale violence has abated. In all fairness the OSCE has had to grapple with some very deep identity-based conflicts, which it entered only after a period of intense fighting had made resolution of the deep-seated differences extremely difficult. This was certainly true of the conflicts in Moldova, Nagorno Karabakh, and both the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions of Georgia, all of which have proven extremely resistant to settlement efforts. Despite the inability of the OSCE to broker solutions to these difficult conflicts, the organization’s presence has at least helped prevent violence from reigniting, and this is a significant accomplishment for which the OSCE deserves considerable credit.

There can be little doubt that the OSCE has failed to meet many of the expectations generated on its behalf when the Cold War came to an end and the Charter of Paris was adopted in 1990. In large part this is due less to the inherent inadequacies of the institution than to the unwillingness of member states to make the necessary contributions of human and economic resources as well as political support to enable the OSCE to be more successful in achieving its objectives. The chaotic conditions in the Balkans and in the peripheries of the former Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War made any easy success too much to expect, especially given that the OSCE was provided only limited leverage to affect the outcome by its most powerful members. It would thus be inappropriate to expect too much from a fledgling multilateral security institution operating in a political context that has tended either to favor unilateral action by hegemonic states or, in cases where multilateralism is preferred, to rely primarily on NATO, the European Union, or the United Nations. Nonetheless, with only a modest additional infusion of resources I believe the OSCE role in conflict management in post-Cold War Eurasia could be strengthened significantly. The following areas deserve special attention:

The OSCE needs high-profile leadership at the very top. Where it has been most successful in conflict management, individuals have stepped forward to assume creative leadership roles, but, with the exception of the high commissioner on national minorities, so far no such role has been institutionalized. Most leadership comes from the chairman-in-office, who rotates every year, and this person is selected according to nationality rather than because of any special leadership qualities. Above all the OSCE needs a high-profile secretary-general, who may also take a personal role in intervening in the most difficult conflict situations to try to promote resolution. The secretary-general also needs to be backed up by a highly professional director of the Conflict Prevention Center, supported by an enlarged if still

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

modest staff of professional specialists in conflict analysis and management, to take leadership of the OSCE activities in this vital area.

The OSCE missions need to be infused with more professional personnel, including the heads of mission and all professional supporting staff. Missions currently depend almost exclusively on personnel seconded by governments, typically for assignments of six months at a time. This means that there is some unevenness in the quality, preparedness, training, and knowledge of the region—including its culture and languages—of mission members. All missions likewise suffer from excessively rapid turnover of personnel. Furthermore, seconded personnel may feel less loyalty to the OSCE than to the governments that pay their salaries. This also occasionally inhibits the ability of OSCE personnel to remain (or at least to be perceived as remaining) neutral between the parties to a dispute. The OSCE thus needs to make financial and personnel commitments to its missions extending beyond the usual six-month mandate now authorized in virtually all cases. Almost all conflicts are too complex to be dealt with in such short periods of time, and long-term planning is required so that missions may build up the expertise and continuity of personnel that are needed to be able to perform their functions effectively.

In addition, a commitment to hire personnel for longer time periods, typically at least for two-year commitments, would reduce turnover and enhance the knowledge and experience of mission members. A core professional staff of conflict management experts backed by high-quality personnel seconded for significant lengths of time would be in a better position to engage actively in the tasks of conflict prevention and resolution with which the missions are charged. Furthermore, personnel are needed whose first loyalty is to the OSCE rather than their home governments. The criteria for selection need to be based on qualifications to manage conflicts of the kind that have appeared throughout the region, instead of the current practice of selecting individuals who can be spared for one reason or another by their governments, often because they are not those who are most needed elsewhere.

OSCE mission members need to receive high-quality professional training before going into the field. At present there is no formal training program, so mission members frequently have little knowledge of the situations in the countries where they are stationed. Even more significantly, almost none have any formal training in techniques of negotiation, mediation, and conflict resolution beyond what they might have picked up from training given by their ministries when they entered the service of their home governments. The OSCE thus needs to assign high priority to establishing formal training in negotiation, mediation, and other con-

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

flict management skills, as well as training about the important and sensitive issues of the regions in which its missions are stationed.

An analytical support staff at the Conflict Prevention Center in Vienna could provide expert backing and advice for missions in the field. Staffed by a small number of specialists in conflict management, who could be called on by field missions whenever their advice and assistance were needed, supported by good library and data-processing resources, an analytical bureau within the Conflict Prevention Center could go a long way toward providing mission members with the professional backing they so desperately need. What is needed is not a large bureaucracy but a small staff of specialists on conflict analysis and management who can respond flexibly to developing conflicts in whatever region they might appear.

The OSCE needs to strengthen both the mandate and resources of the Office of the High Commissioner on National Minorities without making it overly bureaucratized. The high commissioner is one of the OSCE’s most effective tools for early warning and early intervention in potential conflict situations. At present the high commissioner is severely constrained by several provisions of the office’s mandate and by the limited resources and relatively small staff available to draw on in fulfilling that mandate. Interventions are restricted to issues (a) where national minorities are involved, (b) where there is no terrorist element operating, and (c) where there is a significant threat that a conflict might spill over international borders.

These constraints largely explain why the high commissioner has functioned only in conflicts in former communist countries rather than in other parts of Europe, even though the incumbent high commissioner has defined his role broadly within the limits of the mandate adopted at the 1992 OSCE summit in Helsinki. This has created the unfortunate perception that the OSCE is largely an organization through which Western European and North American governments can manage conflicts in Eastern Europe and Central Asia but not the reverse.51 It has created the impression that only some minority conflicts deserve attention and not others; for example, conflicts where the parties are divided along religious rather than nationality lines are not formally eligible to receive assistance from the high commissioner’s office. And it means that terrorist activities by extremists associated with a national minority may prevent the high commissioner from interceding in disputes in which they participate, even when the vast majority of the members of that nationality may have refrained altogether from the use of violence. Ironically, the high commissioner may intervene in conflicts where parties have resorted to full-scale war but not where some individuals have resorted to terrorism, as defined by member governments. Thus, the high commissioner

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

has intervened in the conflict between Abkhazians and the Georgian government, who fought a bloody war in 1992–1993, but may not do so in the conflict between Kurds and the government of Turkey due to government allegations of terrorist activity by certain Kurdish factions.

The success of the office of the High Commissioner on National Minorities since its creation in 1992 has largely been the result of the dedicated and brilliant work of its first incumbent, former Dutch Foreign Minister Max van der Stoel, and a small, hard-working, and intelligent professional staff. It is by no means certain that future high commissioners will interpret their mandate as broadly, engage themselves as actively, and perform to the high professional standards set by the original set of officials in the Hague. The office thus needs to be strengthened in terms of both its mandate and its resources—human and financial—in order to assure that its effectiveness is institutionalized after the first high commissioner leaves. Any efforts to weaken the office after van der Stoel’s retirement must be strongly resisted by the most important countries in the OSCE. The high commissioner has enjoyed strong support from the delegations of the United States, the Russian Federation, and the European Union, and the continued support of all of these delegations will be essential to preserve and strengthen what has perhaps been the most innovative and unique contribution made by the OSCE to enhance security in Europe since the end of the Cold War.

The OSCE needs to enhance its cooperation and coordination with other organizations working in the field of European security, especially NATO, the European Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Western European Union, and the Council of Europe. No one organization is likely to emerge in the near future as the sole arbiter of European security, since no single organization has the capacity to fulfill the full range of functions required to promote the building of a security regime.

The OSCE’s dependence on NATO to provide military security (as SFOR does in Bosnia) so that the OSCE can carry out its activities, such as monitoring elections and assisting in the return of refugees, is evident in several cases. It is equally evident that there are many issues in which military force does not provide the exclusive answer, so that the OSCE rather than NATO was assigned to monitor the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo and disarmament of the Kosovo Liberation Army in October 1998. If NATO and other OSCE member states had been asked and been willing to provide armed protection for the Kosovo Verification Mission, operating as it did in a hostile environment, the mission might have been able to fulfill its mandate more effectively. Indeed, limited action by NATO and its partner countries, acting under OSCE auspices, to prevent violence on the part of both the Serbian and Kosovar Albanian sides in the early stages of escalation in the summer and fall of 1998 might have been

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

able to head off the explosion of the Kosovo crisis into full-scale war in 1999 and the resulting humanitarian tragedy that unfolded throughout the Balkans.

Finally, as indicated in the NATO-Russian Founding Act, peacekeeping operations in which NATO troops play a prominent but not an exclusive role might be mandated by the OSCE. Since Russia has a voice in OSCE decision making, OSCE-mandated operations, perhaps with Russia and other non-NATO states contributing troops, may be viewed as less politically one sided and may have more widespread political legitimacy than actions undertaken unilaterally by NATO. In this respect the model of IFOR and SFOR in Bosnia might serve as a precedent but with the OSCE providing the mandate, especially if a UN decision is blocked by a possible Chinese veto.

The OSCE also needs to expand cooperation with the European Union, on which it often depends to finance many projects essential to fulfill its mandate in postconflict security building, for example. Finally, the OSCE needs to negotiate a clear division of labor with institutions such as the Council of Europe that perform overlapping functions such as democratization in the former communist states, so that the two institutions do not duplicate efforts much less get in one another’s way in carrying out their activities.

Member states need to recognize that participation in a regional security regime like the OSCE inherently entails the sacrifice of some of the prerogatives of state sovereignty. Too often action on the part of the OSCE has been blocked or watered down by the necessity to maintain support for the work of its missions by countries that are parties to a dispute or by powerful states that back particular factions in some of the ongoing disputes. There are good reasons for maintaining the principle of consensus as the decision rule in the OSCE, since it acts as a safety valve to keep the organization from collapsing due to disputes among its member states. On the other hand, consensus should not be regarded as equivalent to a legalistic veto, and a “substantial” consensus among an overwhelming majority of the member states should be respected by dissenting states. This is especially true for some of the most powerful member states. The United States has occasionally resisted OSCE actions that might have impinged on its ability to intervene unilaterally in conflict situations. And the Russian Federation, which professes strong support for the OSCE as an alternative to NATO, has occasionally blocked consensus or prevented the OSCE from acting decisively in some of the most significant areas where it works, since most of these conflicts fall within Russia’s “near abroad” or at least within its perceived “sphere of influence.” If Russia wants to make a credible case for making the OSCE the centerpiece of the European security architecture,

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

its behavior within the organization will have to match its rhetoric more closely.

In short, although the OSCE has developed and promoted a number of important universal norms as a multilateral organization, it is simultaneously a political organization composed of states with their own interests. It has not totally overcome the obstacles created when the interests of powerful states take precedence over the interests of parties locked in conflict or the larger interests of the “international community.” Nonetheless, it has undertaken a wide range of activities to realize common interests in preventing the escalation of conflicts, facilitating their termination and resolution, and aiding in the reconstruction of societies damaged by the ravages of war. In fulfilling these functions the OSCE has clearly surpassed the minimal criteria for a security regime identified by Keohane and Nye in the Introduction to this chapter, namely restraining anarchy and promoting cooperation in situations where peace is unstable and the risk for violence is high. Yet its strength has been in its ability to make modest incremental contributions, alongside other parties, often carrying out the detailed work necessary to make more publicized activities successful. It often operates quietly, outside the glare of publicity, so that the large number of significant contributions it has made to security building in Eurasia have frequently gone largely unnoticed.

For the OSCE to achieve its potential, member states must have confidence that their long-term interests will be better served by a stable and secure Europe in order to be willing to forego getting their way on issues that may negatively affect their narrow, short-term interests. The OSCE thus faces a “dilemma of expectations”: if national governments were confident in the OSCE’s potential and gave it the support it needs—not only material but also political—it could become demonstrably more successful in producing clear and recognizable joint security benefits for all of its members. This would reinforce the confidence that member governments and their populations have in the OSCE and their willingness to give it the support it needs. As a consequence, the OSCE might become even more effective at producing common security, in a positive spiral of mounting confidence and capability, perhaps eventually forming a full-fledged security regime.

Conversely, in the absence of such support the OSCE will inevitably fall short of the expectations generated for it. This will cause its critics to dismiss it as another weak and ineffective multilateral organization on which states cannot depend to protect their national security. States may consequently withdraw their support from the OSCE and put greater confidence in military alliances and unilateral “self-help.” This would further weaken the OSCE and make it into the helpless organization that

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

its critics said it was all along, reinforcing a negative cycle of diminishing expectations and ineffectiveness.

The OSCE alone, of course, is not a panacea for a new, stable, and secure European order, and excessively optimistic expectations could lead to almost certain disappointment and disillusionment. At the same time the denial by realists of the potential of multilateral security institutions like the OSCE undermines the ability of regional security organizations to reach their potential. What is needed is a recognition of the concrete accomplishments already made by the OSCE and support for the optimistic but not unrealistic belief that some modest efforts to strengthen the OSCE could make a significant positive contribution to a more secure common future for all Europeans “from Vancouver to Vladivostok.”

The OSCE as a Model for Other Global Regions

Finally, I turn briefly to lessons learned from the OSCE experience in Europe that may be applied to other regions of the globe. The OSCE has become a full-fledged regional security organization as defined under Chapter VIII of the UN Charter. Although similar organizations exist in some other parts of the world—the Organization for African Unity, the Organization of American States, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum (ARF) in Southeast Asia, for example—no regional organization has taken on the broad security functions of the OSCE thus far. For example, the ARF has entered into confidence-building measures in dangerous regions, such as the South China Sea, but has been extremely cautious about intervening in disputes that might in any way be construed as falling within the internal affairs of states. Thus, it has avoided any attempt to develop an agreed set of norms comparable to the Helsinki Decalogue, to say nothing of relatively intrusive measures like the OSCE missions of long duration or the high commissioner on national minorities, even though such ideas may be of interest to some states in the region.

At the outset, therefore, several cautionary notes are appropriate about the generalizability of the OSCE experience. First, the OSCE has largely assumed many of the functions previously performed by the UN in Eurasia, and in several places such as Bosnia, Croatia, Georgia, and Tajikistan there has been some modest competition between the OSCE and the UN. Competition has faded since the early 1990s, however, as the UN has been overwhelmed by so many conflicts that many UN officials are relieved to see the OSCE lift some burdens from their shoulders. Nonetheless, it is far from clear that regional security organizations in other parts of the world will have the resources to replace the UN as the major guarantor of security. Fortunately, in recent years the UN has been

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

able to focus its scarce resources on those regions that most need its help, such as Africa and the Middle East. It thus seems to be neither necessary nor desirable to create regional organizations that essentially duplicate the functions of the UN Security Council in every region of the world, unless it can be demonstrated that regional organizations are likely to be significantly more effective at conflict management than the UN.

Second, the OSCE at present is to some degree a creature of its history, especially its origin as an institution intended to overcome the divisions wrought by the East-West conflict. Prior to 1990 the OSCE had thus been a unique institution for East and West to discuss security issues. Since the end of the Cold War it has evolved into an organization that has sought to create order out of the chaos that accompanied the collapse of the communist system, and it is currently able to take advantage of the potential for post-Cold War cooperation to deal with those conflicts that have erupted in large part as a consequence of the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the communist bloc. For this reason many of the lessons of the OSCE are perhaps not relevant to other regions that were situated more on the periphery of the East-West confrontation.

With these cautions in mind, there are nonetheless several key OSCE functions that might be adapted and applied in other regions afflicted with difficult conflicts:

The OSCE has founded its security role on a firm basis of normative principles, including human rights and democratic governance, that make it more than a narrow security organization. These “shared values” have been accepted by European states despite the substantial diversity of values that existed in the region, at least until 1989. While other regions may find it even harder to identify shared values, this should not be an insuperable obstacle to overcome in regions such as sub-Saharan Africa or much of Latin America, for example.

The OSCE concept of “missions of long duration” might also be usefully applied in other geographical regions that have experienced long-simmering conflicts that threaten to boil over. These missions may provide early warning of potential conflicts on the horizon, and they may aid parties to a dispute to avert violence while pursuing negotiations leading to a more fundamental resolution of their differences. One might envisage such a role in locations such as South and Southeast Asia, for example, in Indonesia concerning East Timor and other regions populated by ethnic and religious minorities, in the Philippines with regard to the Moro region, and in Sri Lanka with regard to the Tamil-dominated regions. These multilateral activities might begin largely as observer groups and perhaps expand into formal activities, including mediation and conflict resolution work with the disputing parties.52

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

The regime of confidence- and security-building measures associated with Basket I of the Helsinki Final Act, the 1986 Stockholm agreement on Disarmament in Europe, and the Vienna Documents 1990, 1992, and 1994 might also be relevant in other regions, especially where traditional enemies face one another in tense circumstances. Confidence-building measures might thus be especially valuable, for example, between Israel and Syria regarding the Golan Heights, between India and Pakistan in the Kashmir region, between Taiwan and China in the Taiwan straits, or between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors in the South China Sea. In each of these areas routine military activities by one party risk being perceived by others in their region as provocative and thus might initiate an escalatory cycle that could spin out of control.

The high commissioner on national minorities is also one of the most innovative and successful of the OSCE devices for dealing with conflicts that might be imitated with appropriate modifications in regions of the world where nationality conflicts are present, including much of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. The key to the success of this model is selecting a high-profile figure of great discretion and impartiality as the high commissioner, so that he or she will be accepted as an authoritative and fair figure by most governments and leaders of national or ethnic groups. This eminent person must be granted considerable flexibility, supporting resources, and the power to intervene on his or her own discretion in issues that many countries will consider to constitute purely internal affairs. Again, it is not hard to envision literally dozens of nationality disputes in Africa, South Asia, or the Middle East where such an individual might act more effectively than national governments or even the UN, especially if the high commissioner comes originally from the region affected by conflict and thus can be sensitive to its cultural values.

While each of these specific functions from the OSCE experience might readily be applied in other regions, what will be most difficult to transfer is the entire set of interconnected issues and institutions that together make up the OSCE and even more broadly the institutional “architecture” of European security. The OSCE region possesses more of the background characteristics necessary for the creation of a security regime than any other area of the globe. Simply put, Europe is the most “institutionally dense” region of the world. Insofar as the OSCE is successful at contributing to European security, that is in large part because of its many complex linkages with other institutions such as NATO, the Western European Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States, the European Union, the Council of Europe, and so forth. Without these reinforcing institutions to assist the OSCE in fulfilling its functions or to fill in the gaps in the fabric of European security not covered by the OSCE, it is

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

doubtful that the OSCE could have realized even the modest level of success that it has achieved since 1975.

Since this environment simply does not exist in any other global region, it is unlikely that any regional security institution can be developed that will be able to replicate all of the many attributes that the OSCE now possesses. That said, the OSCE has invented and developed more fully than any other regional organization certain techniques and institutional structures to deal with violent conflict that might usefully be applied elsewhere, either by regional security organizations or the UN in its activities in those regions of the world in which it still is likely to be the institution of first choice whenever threats to the security of states and peoples arise.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This chapter was researched and a first draft was written while I held a Fulbright senior research fellowship to the OSCE in Vienna, Austria, and a Jennings Randolph senior fellowship at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., from September 1997 through August 1998. I am grateful to both organizations for their assistance in making this research possible, especially to Richard Pettit at the Council for International Exchange of Scholars; Stanley Schrager and Ilene Jennison of the Public Affairs Division, U.S. Mission to the OSCE in Vienna; Otmar Höll, director of the Austrian Institute on International Affairs; Finn Chemnitz, Diplomatic Officer at the OSCE Conflict Prevention Center; and Joseph Klaits, director, and Sally Blair, program officer, of the Jennings Randolph Program of the United States Institute of Peace. I am also grateful to Simon Limage for research assistance and Daniel Druckman, Alexander George, James Goodby, Dennis Sandole, Janice Stein, Paul Stern, I.William Zartman, and four anonymous reviewers for comments on a draft of this chapter. Portions of this chapter are drawn from a larger work being prepared by the author for the United States Institute of Peace Press.

NOTES

1

One of these states, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, was suspended in 1992 due to its actions in violation of OSCE norms in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Prior to 1995 the OSCE was known as the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). In this chapter I refer to it as the CSCE when discussing its activities from 1973 through 1994, but when referring to it generically, or to its activities since 1995, I refer to it as the OSCE.

2

For classic statements of this argument, see John Lewis Gaddis, “The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International System,” in Sean M.Lynn-Jones, ed., The Cold War and After: Prospects for Peace (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 1–44, and John J.Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War,” ibid., pp. 141–192.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Robert O.Keohane and Joseph S.Nye, “Introduction: The End of the Cold War in Europe,” in Robert O.Keohane, Joseph S.Nye, and Stanley Hoffmann, eds., After the Cold War: International Institutions and State Strategies in Europe, 1989–1991 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 5.

Michael S.Lund, Preventing Violent Conflicts: A Strategy for Preventive Diplomacy (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996), p. 38. I have modified Lund’s “Life History of a Conflict” to take account of an additional distinction suggested by Alexander George and James E.Goodby, namely to divide “unstable peace” into two categories, “conditional peace” and “precarious peace.” See Alexander George, “Foreword” to James E.Goodby, Europe Undivided: The New Logic of Peace in U.S.-Russian Relations (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press), pp. ix–x. Precarious peace refers to a situation that is highly conflict prone though not yet in a crisis stage, whereas conditional peace refers to a less acute situation where there is a potential for escalation but where acute crises seldom arise.

9

At this point in the Cold War and under the regime of hard-line dictator Enver Hoxha, Albania had severed most of its ties even with other communist regimes in Europe, maintaining friendly ties only with the Peoples’ Republic of China, North Korea, and Cuba.

10

For an excellent and detailed analysis of the Vienna CSCE meeting by a member of the Austrian delegation, see Stefan Lehne, The Vienna Meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1986–1989: A Turning Point in East-West Relations (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991).

11

Two other documents also were adopted under CSCE auspices in 1990, namely the Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe and the 1990 Vienna document on confidence-and security-building measures. Since these documents dealt mostly with arms control measures, they had less of an impact on the normative and institutional underpinnings of European security while nonetheless strengthening the European security regime through greater transparency, limitations on military activities, and significant reductions of conventional armaments.

The number of member states increased to 54 when the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic divided voluntarily into two separate states at the beginning of 1993 and to 55 when Andorra was admitted in 1996; this includes the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia whose voting rights were suspended in 1992.

14

Allan Rosas and Timo Lahelma, “OSCE Long-Term Missions,” in Michael Bothe, Natalino Ronzitti, and Allan Rosas, eds., The OSCE in the Maintenance of Peace and Security: Conflict Prevention, Crisis Management, and Peaceful Settlement of Disputes (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1997), p. 169. These missions were subsequently withdrawn at the re-

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

quest of the government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia after its voting rights in the CSCE were suspended.

15

This figure excludes the many individuals seconded to the OSCE by member governments, including the bulk of the staff of its missions and field activities. It also excludes the large number of people recruited on a short-term basis by ODIHR, for example, to supervise and monitor elections.

16

John J.Maresca, To Helsinki: The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1973–1975 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1985), p. 64. The author was deputy chief of the U.S. delegation to the CSCE negotiations during the period covered in this book.

17

This skepticism has not necessarily extended to the working levels where there is often active engagement with the OSCE and support for its activities, especially by the large U.S. delegation assigned to the OSCE in Vienna.

18

The analysis in this section is based largely on on-site research by the author at the OSCE headquarters in Vienna for two extended periods. In 1992 the author spent a total of about five months in Vienna and Helsinki, observing closely the work of the CSCE’s Conflict Prevention Center at a time when missions of long duration were first being created. He also closely observed negotiations on the Vienna Document 1992 on confidence- and security-building measures; the final negotiations of the Open Skies Treaty; and the preparation, conduct, and follow-up to the Helsinki summit of July 1992. He interviewed senior officials in the CSCE secretariat and senior representatives (generally the head of mission) of most CSCE countries present in Vienna at that time.

The author also had a second extended period of close observation of the OSCE from September 1997 through January 1998. During that time he attended most formal and informal meetings of the Permanent Council, including reports by mission heads and the heads of OSCE bodies in both an informal setting and formal presentations to the council. He also interviewed all heads of the OSCE missions during their regular reporting visits to Vienna, and he visited on site the OSCE mission in Moldova, traveling with the mission head to Transdniestria. He interviewed senior officials of the Conflict Prevention Center, the high commissioner on national minorities, and the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Vienna, the Hague, and Warsaw, respectively. He has obtained copies of all field reports from the 14 OSCE missions and other field activities since their inception, typically issued about once a month, although the frequency may be more or less often according to the demands of each individual situation. He also obtained copies of all official correspondence between the high commissioner on national minorities and governments where he visited, including all of his recommendations to those governments. Finally, he obtained materials from ODIHR, including all election evaluation reports.

The analysis that follows, therefore, is based largely on the author’s personal observation, interviews, and reading of original documents concerning the field activities of the OSCE in several regions of potential or actual violent conflict.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

problem regarding the continuing crisis in the Kosovo region of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, where international agencies have been warning of a potential crisis since 1989 but where by late 1997 the crisis had not yet boiled over into widespread violence. The danger, he noted, was that the international community had become habituated to the crisis in this region and might not respond to new warnings that this crisis was on the verge of rapid escalation until it was too late. Unfortunately, his concerns in this regard appear to have been largely borne out by the intensifying conflict and increasing violence that appeared in Kosovo in 1998, more than one year before NATO began its aerial bombardment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. One can only speculate about the lives, resources, and human misery that might have been spared had political leaders in the major states, especially in Washington, heeded the “early warnings” generated by several OSCE missions and officials such as Ambassador van der Stoel in late 1997, rather than waiting almost a year to act, at which time the cycle of escalation had become firmly entrenched and the potential for effective preventive diplomacy had been greatly reduced.

John Packer, “Autonomy Within the OSCE: The Case of Crimea,” in Markku Suksi, ed., Autonomy: Applications and Implications (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1998), p. 310.

34

Statement by U.S. Head of Delegation Sam Brown, 12 January 1995, to the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna, in Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe of the U.S. Congress, “Hearings on the Crisis in Chechnya” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1995), pp. 128–130.

35

Carlotta Gall and Thomas de Waal, Chechnya: Calamity in the Caucasus (New York: New York University Press, 1998), pp. 275–282.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, no. 542 (November 1995), pp. 24–47.

43

For a review of the literature on third-party roles, see P.Terrence Hopmann, The Negotiation Process and the Resolution of International Conflicts (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), chap. 12.

44

CSCE Mission to Moldova, Report No. 13, 16 November 1993, pp. 1–3.

45

Foundation on Inter-ethnic Relations, op. cit, pp. 68–70.

46

“Memorandum on the Fundamentals of Normalizing the Relations Between the Republic of Moldova and Trans-Dniestria,” annex to Spot Report No. 18/96, OSCE Mission to Moldova, 11 July 1996.

The argument that the OSCE has tended to become engaged only in conflicts in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia rather than in Western countries (including Turkey) is made persuasively by Martin Alexanderson in “The Need for a Generalised Application of the Minorities Regime in Europe,” Helsinki Monitor, vol. 8, no. 4 (1997), pp. 47–58.

52

For example, the government of Indonesia has mediated in its role as chair of the Organization of Islamic States and as a member of ASEAN in the dispute between the Moro region populated primarily by Muslim inhabitants and the government of the Philippines, also an ASEAN member state. See Dino Patti Djalal, “The Indonesian Experience in Facilitating a Peace Settlement Between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF),” paper presented at the Preventive Diplomacy Workshop of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific, Bangkok, Thailand, 28 February-2 March 1999.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

Suggested Citation:"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe: Its Contribution to Conflict Prevention and Resolution." National Research Council. 2000. International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/9897.

The end of the Cold War has changed the shape of organized violence in the world and the ways in which governments and others try to set its limits. Even the concept of international conflict is broadening to include ethnic conflicts and other kinds of violence within national borders that may affect international peace and security. What is not yet clear is whether or how these changes alter the way actors on the world scene should deal with conflict:

Do the old methods still work?

Are there new tools that could work better?

How do old and new methods relate to each other?

International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War critically examines evidence on the effectiveness of a dozen approaches to managing or resolving conflict in the world to develop insights for conflict resolution practitioners. It considers recent applications of familiar conflict management strategies, such as the use of threats of force, economic sanctions, and negotiation. It presents the first systematic assessments of the usefulness of some less familiar approaches to conflict resolution, including truth commissions, "engineered" electoral systems, autonomy arrangements, and regional organizations. It also opens up analysis of emerging issues, such as the dilemmas facing humanitarian organizations in complex emergencies. This book offers numerous practical insights and raises key questions for research on conflict resolution in a transforming world system.

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